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Consider the humble handle. Most likely you don’t consider it, but you do use one every time you drink a cup of coffee, lift a suitcase or open a cabinet. The German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote an entire treatise, “The Handle,” in 1911, calling attention to the fact that it is both a functional and aesthetic object. A new exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center, “Handle with Care” celebrates this often overlooked appendage with a group of objects drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. The show, on view through Sept. 14, will have you looking at handles in a whole new way.
Patrick Crowley, associate curator of European Art at the Cantor, said the idea for the show came partly from the Simmel essay, which he read as a student at Columbia University, but also from a desire to highlight objects that are usually found in storage. Like many museums, the Cantor has a vast holding of art and antiquities that rarely see the light of day. “We usually have about 3% to 4% of the collection on display at any given time,” Crowley said.
Narrowing the checklist down to objects with handles familiar and unfamiliar took time and effort. “I tried to have a mix of really unusual objects like an ancient glass vessel for cosmetics to very ordinary objects like a boot puller,” he explained.
“Many of the objects in this exhibition have never been on view or studied since the founding of the museum,” Crowley said. “I got to spend a lot of time in storage looking for things that might be suitable – it’s like going on a treasure hunt without a map.”
The things he found are varied and fascinating, encompassing artifacts from centuries BCE to items from the 21st century. An introductory panel reminds viewers that handles are an essential design element in many objects and, like a picture frame, are both structural and decorative. The handle is also usually the weakest link and the part that budding museum technicians are told never to grab. And yet a wall of centuries-old bronze handles, probably from tools, proves that they are often the only things that stand the test of time.
SLIDESHOW: “Handle with Care” includes objects from the Cantor Arts Center’s permanent collection that represent a wide variety of time periods, including ancient pieces such as a glass perfume jar, or amphoriskos, from around 304 BCE. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center. 
SLIDESHOW: Ancient items from the Cantor’s permanent collection featured in the exhibition include the ceramic Vessel in the Form of a Coiled Serpent, from around 300 BCE. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center. 
SLIDESHOW: A 19th-century hand mirror made of jade (white nephrite) with gilt metal frame has an ornately decorated handle. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center.
Objects like “Vessel in the Form of a Coiled Serpent” (300-BCE ) and “Perfume Jar” (304 BCE) will have you amazed at how they survived, intact, for so long. But even more contemporary pieces, like the Wedgwood “Teapot” (c. 1800), deftly crafted in stoneware, seem to defy age and use. Likewise the glass objects, gifts from Salviati & Co. (the Venetian firm contracted by Jane Stanford to create the stained glass in the Memorial Church) are in pristine condition and still quite beautiful. The delicate “Dragonfly Cup in Pale Violet” (c. 1890) is ethereal and reminiscent of the insect that inspired it. The fun and funky “Fish Ewer” (c. 1890) could be a functional object if it were filled with wine. The handle that also forms the dorsal fin allows the user to tip the vessel to the mouth and drink out of the tail.
In addition to its stated objective, the exhibition also succeeds in reminding us about the importance of the story behind the museum and, in fact, Stanford University. This is done by the inclusion of objects from the Stanford Family Collection, which consists of art and antiquities purchased by Jane Stanford in her quest to memorialize her only child. While the entire campus was built as a tribute to Leland Stanford Jr., it was the museum that afforded Jane the opportunity to establish a legacy for her son.
Young Leland, born in 1868, grew up in luxury and privilege and was destined to take over his father’s impressive estate, including the family’s horse farm in Palo Alto. He had an early interest in art and archeology, which was encouraged by his parents. The Stanfords took the first of several “grand tours” of Europe, as was the custom of wealthy Gilded Age families, in 1880. Leland Jr. was given money to purchase objects for a museum that he hoped one day to establish in San Francisco, where the family had a mansion on Nob Hill. He bought Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts, many of which were displayed in a special room in the house. But a trip to Italy in 1884 ended in tragedy when the young Leland caught typhoid fever and died. Upon their return to Palo Alto, Jane and Leland Sr. began to plan the university that bears their son’s name. After her husband’s death, Jane devoted herself to creating the museum her son had envisioned.
SLIDESHOW: Dragonfly Cup in Pale Violet was one of a number of gifts to the Stanford family from Salviati & Co., a Venetian firm hired by Jane Stanford to create the stained glass in the university’s Memorial Church. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center. 
SLIDESHOW: A whimsical glass fish ewer was a gift to the Stanfords from the Salviati & Co. glassmakers in Venice. The handle that doubles as the fish’s dorsal fin allows the user to lift the vessel and drink from the tail. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center.
Objects in this exhibition reveal both the academic and personal aspects of the family collection. “They definitely had very eclectic tastes! But what makes the Stanford Family Collections so interesting to me is that it includes not only fine art, but also ordinary objects that had sentimental value to the family,” Crowley said.
The objects may be ordinary, but they certainly reflect the wealth and status of the owners. There is a miniature sword with jewels in the scabbard made for young Leland, as well as a small cane with a brass horse hoof handle (likely fashioned as a nod to his future inheritance). There is an alabaster vessel with a handled lid, just the sort of thing a wealthy family would display in the drawing room. A lovely tortoise shell lorgnette (eyeglasses) with an engraved filigree design on the handle would confer status when used at the opera.
There are also items, as Crowley points out, that were not expensive but do reveal aspects of the Stanfords’ lives. There is a small purse, probably purchased in a market place, made of fabric and finely woven straw. Created around 1882, it has the word “Firenze” woven into the front and is just the kind of souvenir any female tourist of the era might acquire. It has a special poignancy since this was the Italian city where Leland Jr. died so unexpectedly.
SLIDESHOW: Among the many items in the exhibit with connections to the Stanford family is a souvenir purse from Florence, Italy, from around 1882. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center. 
SLIDESHOW: Th exhibit offfers a look at some personal items from the Stanford family, such as engraved tortoise shell eyeglasses, or lorgnette, for the opera. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center. 
SLIDESHOW: An engraved silver shoe horn was a Christmas gift from Jane Stanford to Leland Sr. in 1889. Courtesy Cantor Arts Center.
Personal gifts like a boot puller with an ivory handle and an engraved silver shoe horn, a Christmas gift from Jane to Leland in 1889, remind us that while the Stanfords were benefactors of a major university, they were also a 19th-century family who enjoyed enormous wealth yet also experienced profound sorrow.
On a much lighter note, be sure to see the 1887 Eadweard Muybridge photographic series that shows not a horse (his experiments in capturing the movement of horses were a seminal event in the history of the medium), but a nude woman walking toward a table in order to sit down and daintily hold the handle of a tea cup before partaking of the drink.
“What I liked about organizing the show around something as trivial as a handle is that it takes something we are all intimately familiar with and invites us to slow down and think about how it shapes the way we move through the world,” said Crowley. He added, “I hope people will think about their relationships to objects and the built environment with fresh eyes – and hands. If someone pauses, even for just a moment, to think about a handle the next time they flush a toilet or pick up a coffee mug, I’ll be very happy.”
“Handle With Care” is on view through Sept. 14 at the Cantor Arts Center, 328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way, Stanford. Admission is free. museum.stanford.edu/exhibitions/handle-care.
